Is Twitter for you?

There are tons of sites on the internet and an even larger number of people who seem to be going ga-ga over twitter. I have only recently started using twitter and so had to really convince myself (and a few others) about what the true potential of using twitter could be.

Twitter provides a platform for users to send out status updates in upto 140 characters. This is termed as microblogging. So how exactly is a status update supposed to work for you? Well, these status updates are initially used by users to put up the latest events in their lives or just to tell people what they are upto. Eventually, it becomes a place where they start putting up links to articles/sites/issues that interest them. This opens the door to several possibilities. Companies can follow twitter profiles of potential employees to find out their interests and affiliations and vice-versa or use them for connecting with the customers. Followers are people who choose to “subscribe” to your status updates and unlike in facebook, don’t require your permission to do so.

Many brands/companies have their own twitter profiles. They often use these profiles to inform people about various offers and discounts, respond to customer inquiries, monitor customer opinions etc. Having said that, twitter isn’t a medium that marketers can choose to make use of overnight. In order to do this, they would need to find out carefully which conversation to get involved in, and more importantly stay involved in. As my one of my friend says, it may be something that companies need to spend a substantial amount of time and effort in achieving. I agree, but I would look at it as an investment, and a good one at that.

Having millions of followers may not be the best result or the yardstick being used to measure your success as a marketer using twitter. You need to have a group of followers who are interested in what you are saying for it to be beneficial to you. Or else, your message may just be getting diluted. Interested followers are most likely to engage in more meaningful conversations and result in better feedback for you. Your message would then get re-tweeted and spread by your followers on to theirs and so on, therefore reaching a really wide audience. In a way, your customers are your medium to advertise. And the best part of this… it’s word of mouth, the most trusted medium for most people.

A common misconception is that twitter is only for geeks and techies. Twitter’s easy to use homepage makes it really easy to navigate for anyone who wants to try. The only thing that needs getting used to is how to really use the status messages to put up something useful to the people who are reading them. I think this comes with time and practice.

During a conversation at lunch with a colleague, she said she is sometimes reluctant to use twitter to update some messages as she doesn’t want everyone to receive them. Most messages are ok, but some she would want only a certain group of people to be sent to. Twitter doesn’t let you decide who receives the message and who doesn’t, rather sending it out like a broadcast to all those following you. I couldn’t think of a possible solution to this. Do people create multiple profiles for themselves to send out specific messages to select followers or is there another solution to this?